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Third Sabbath Cycle 7 daylights and evenings Moon waning
Forth Sabbath 7 daylights and evenings Moon waning
An extended Sabbath interval New Moon daylight Moon invisible in night sky +
* -- The Moon "rules all the night in the midst of the sky" on this evening.
+ -- The Moon "rules all the day in the midst of the sky" on this day.
The diagram -- as a composite summary of New Testament and Sea Scroll texts -- shows
that the early Sabbath cycle was very formally counted. Amid this formal count the evening of the
whole Moon was significant in delimiting the opposite, or reverse, of the lunar-month cycle and
the daylight of the dark Moon was also significant in delimiting the other opposite, or reverse, of
the lunar-month cycle.
This information indicates that the ancient Moon cycle was counted in stages (not actual
days).
The significance of counting the month by lunar-stages is further evident from some of the
scrolls (which are conspicuous in the usage of no more than a fixed count of 28 days in each lunar
cycle):
"Not one fragment of 4Qenastr contains a complete description of days 15 and 30 for the
(lunar) months of 30 days and of day 29 for the (lunar) months containing 29 days…"
The Astronomical Books Of Enoch, by Milik. Pages 283-284).
"and in night 28 of this (month, the Moon) is covered by six sevenths and a half, and
there is subtracted from its light [six sevenths and a half. And then it emerges (from the
same door as before) and it shines during] the rest of this night with a half of a seventh
(part). And it waxes during this day to its entirety. And then it sets and enters [the … gate
and is covered during the rest of] this day in its entirety and all the rest of its light is
removed and its disc emerges, devoid of all light, hidden by the s[un ….". (4Qenastr,Pls.
XXV-XXX).
"And in periods of seven days the moon undergoes its changes. In the first week she be
comes half moon; in the second, full moon; and in the third, in her wane, again half
moon; and in the fourth she disappears." (St. Clement of Alexandria [Second Century],
The Stromata, or Miscellanies, Chapter 16).
An Astronomical Cycle Of Fourteen-Squared Phases
The peculiar subdivision of Sabbaths and New Moons -- by remarkable periods of 14 days
of waxing followed by 14 days of waning -- is of considerable interest in the regard that a remark-
able interface of 14-squared lunar quarter-phases can directly be identified based upon a conjunc-
tion of the Moon with the rate of the rotation of the Earth.
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